Iran “not only has a track record of nuclear cover-ups but considers lying a religious duty if convenient.”
Taqiyya as a specific concept by that name was developed during the time of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, in middle of the eighth century, when the Shi’ites were being persecuted by the Sunni caliph al-Mansur. Taqiyya allowed Shi’ites to pretend to be Sunnis in order to protect themselves from Sunnis who were killing Shi’ites. Until the conversion of Persia to Shi’ism, taqiyya was an important element of Shi’ite survival, for Sunnis, in the majority almost everywhere, would not infrequently take it upon themselves to cleanse the land of those whom they referred to as Rafidites, that is, rejecters — those who rejected the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman.
Some Shi’ite thinkers turned the secrecy that had become a necessity into a virtue. The medieval Shi’ite scholar Ali ibn Musa ibn Tawus, who died in 1266, taught that Allah had revealed Shi’ism secretly, and it was incumbent upon the believers to practice it in secret. At the end of days, Allah will admit them secretly into Paradise. Some secrets were never to be revealed under any circumstances. The fifth imam, Muhammad al-Baqir, who died in 732, once gave a book to one of his disciples, telling him, “If you ever transmit any of it, my curse and the curse of my forefathers will fall upon you.”
The sixth Imam, Jafar Al-Sadiq, who died in 765, had a servant who was suspected of having revealed some of the secrets of the faith. The Imam lectured, “Whoever propagates our tradition is like someone who denies it.…Conceal our doctrine and do not divulge it. God elevates in this world one who conceals our doctrine and does not divulge it and he turns it in the next world into a light between his eyes which will lead him to Paradise. God abases in this world one who divulges our tradition and our doctrine and does not conceal it, and in the next world he removes the light from between his eyes and turns it into darkness which will lead him to hell. Taqiyya is our religion and the religion of our fathers; he who has no taqiyya has no religion.”
Other Imams also emphasized the cardinal importance of taqiyya, apparently not only because Shi’ites were under constant threat from Sunnis, but because Shi’ite Islam contained doctrines that must stay hidden from outsiders. Some sayings of the Imams include, “He who has no taqiyya has no faith”; “he who forsakes taqiyya is like him who forsakes prayer”; “he who does not adhere to taqiyya and does not protect us from the ignoble common people is not part of us”; “nine tenths of faith falls within taqiyya”; “taqiyya is the believer’s shield (junna), but for taqiyya, God would not have been worshipped.”
Taqiyya is ultimately practiced in order to protect Islam and the Muslim community. In contemporary Iran, it is used to try to prevent closer scrutiny of the country’s nuclear program.
“Iran’s Ex-Nuclear Chief Confirms Weapons Cover-Up,” by Faramarz Davar, Iran Wire, November 29, 2021:
On the anniversary of the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and on the eve of the resumption of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency (2011-2013), confirmed that Fakhrizadeh was active in a program to build nuclear weapons. This is the first such admission from a government official in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Eighteen years ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched its first investigations into possible Iran’s nuclear program. The doubts and questions have lingered ever since. The Islamic Republic has constantly maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, in deference to a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini that banned the production, stockpiling and using of nuclear weapons. Of course, in Shia tradition, anybody whose chosen “source of emulation” is not Khamenei is not obligated to follow his fatwas.
In 2003, then-IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei visited the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility to assess the status of Iran’s nuclear program. He then met with President Mohammad Khatami, and was astonished by Khatami’s knowledge of very technical aspects of uranium enrichment. This made him suspicious: “President Khatami, a cleric by training, had just referred to a means of cold-testing a centrifuge without using nuclear material. His point was that Iran had not violated any nuclear reporting requirements. But why would Khatami know about testing with inert gas? I wondered,” wrote ElBaradei in his book Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.
During the same visit to Iran, ElBaradei also met with Khatami’s predecessor Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was then chairman of the Guardian Council. In his nuclear memoir, ElBaradei wrote that Hashemi Rafsanjani had told him: “I saw so many of our people killed with chemical weapons during Iran-Iraq war. I couldn’t be advocating dialogue among civilizations and at the same time developing nuclear weapons.”
Later, ElBaradei would reflect: “I was told by a number of people, including President Mubarak of Egypt, that according to Shiite theology it is sometimes acceptable to deceive for the right cause. The concept is called taqqiya [dissimulation], meaning to protect oneself or those under one’s care from harm. I made it clear to our Iranian counterpart that regardless of the origins of this behavior, their denials and on-ongoing cover-ups had deeply hurt their credibility with the international community. From the outset they had dug a hole that would undermine their own diplomatic endeavors, what I referred to as starting out with a confidence deficit.”…
The Mastermind Behind the Nuclear Weapons Project
Now, close to two decades after ElBaradei raised concerns about a “confidence deficit”, ex-Atomic Energy Agency chief Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani has become the latest Iranian official to evidence why such a deficit exists. Abbasi-Davani gave an interview with state newspaper Iran in which he openly stated that not only had Mohsen Fakhrizadeh spearheaded efforts to build a nuclear weapon, but others with the same “mindset and worldview” as he were involved in Iran’s nuclear program today.
“It is quite clear that our restraint about nuclear weapons was based on the explicit fatwa by the exalted Supreme Leader,” Abbasi-Davani said. “But Fakhrizadeh created the system, and his motive was not only defending our country – because our country supports the [anti-Israel] Resistance Front. When you get into these issues, the Zionists become sensitive. And it wasn’t only Mr. Fakhrizadeh. There are others at the managerial level of our organization who have the same characteristics.”…
Talks on reviving the JCPOA have resumed in the Austrian capital today. But these revelations, by the ex-head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, no less, underscore the need for much stricter supervision of states that do not feel bound by international conventions such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty. One such state is Iran, which not only has a track record of nuclear cover-ups but considers lying a religious duty if convenient.
Frank Anderson says
Negotiating with liars is a waste, a futile and delusional gesture; and is itself a lie to those being represented by the negotiator. I have confronted liars in court where the judge demanded that I attempt to negotiate. It took 3 emergency hearings over 2 weeks to show the judge that negotiating with liars is a waste. When someone tells you they are liars, and have demonstrated it by many different means for 1400 years, it is time to understand they are LIARS and will tell you anything you want to hear in order to keep you talking and from acting as they wish to prevent.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Frank.
James Lincoln says
Frank Anderson,
100% true.
And hard-core liars, even when they are actually telling the truth, will not be believed.
Frank Anderson says
James, from my reading in Spencer’s Pol Incorrect Guide and every other book which includes the story about M promising a community of Jews safe passage from their fortified village if they put down their weapons and left. The men were slaughtered. The women and children were enslaved. Did M intend to let them go and then change his mind; or did he plan this slaughter from the beginning? In any event, that is guidance from the Perfect Man for ALL TIME to all faithful slaves. Muslim promises are meaningless; always have been and always will be. Frank
Wellington says
I’m shocked, shocked to find out that Iran has a nuclear weapons’ program afoot.
Meanwhile, many in the West will, a la Claude Rains, nonetheless collect their winnings.
Westman says
The problem with the weak US admin’s “collecting of the winnings” is it forces Israel into a pre-emptive war with Iran and its proxies.
It’s not hard to envision how difficult such a war will be – the Iran-supported proxies were created to keep Israel from having the resources to attack Iran while also dealing simultaneously with attacks from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and “Palestine”.
The US admin “handlers” are betting that Israel will capitulate to their pressure and not attack Iran’s nuclear bomb project due to the proxies and the necessary fly-over of unwilling nations to reach Iran. Of course, none of the “handers” lives have ever been threatened by a regime whose central goal is to annihilate them and continually develops weapons to accomplish it.
Israel is in a corner, forced to fight a bully 14 times its geographical size and 9.2 times its population size, while its “friends” are taking bets it will continue to, “take a beating”, instead of landing the first devastating blow.
If I was a citizen of Iran, I would think seriously that it is time to remove the Mullahs before they get us killed.
And if a US Presidential “handler”, I would consider what will happen to the housing market, Stock Market, price of fuel, and the economy – A Perfect Storm – if the US keeps giving Iran a green light and Israel a red one.
War is within sight. Even Sarah Palin can see it from her back porch.
Wellington says
The people I had in mind, Westman, who would collect “winnings” would be individual avaricious business personnel. I don’t see any Western nation winning should Iran attain a full nuclear capacity with a viable delivery system.
BTW, Iran is 79-80 times the size of Israel, some 635,000 square miles v. Israel’s 8,000 square miles. For the record.
I still am of the conviction that Israel will stop Iran from attaining a full nuclear capacity, one way or another. If it needs to completely ignore the inept and stupid Brandon Administration, so be it.
Walter Sieruk says
Those disingenuous and outright officials of that hostile Islamic “Republic” of Iran do have every intention of obtaining nuclear weapons by the descopion of Taqiyya or other means , by hook or by crook they are dedicated to that goal of having such weapons of mass destruction.
Those arrogant and malice-filled oppressive antollahs and mullahs along with their Muslim stooges who make up the Iranian parliament with other military generals of that aggressive Islamic tyrannical regime will not let ethics of anything else stand in the way of WMD .
As for those Muslims clerics who have so much power in Iran and influence on its military with its Iranian generals who are only tools of the mullahs and antollahs ., they all may be best description of such horrible characters as they are found in the Bible.
For in Psalm 73:6-9 it reads “Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity[b];
their evil imaginations have no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.” [N.I.V.]
Walter Sieruk says
Just to be clear when I keyboarded the beginning my essay I left ofthe word “lying” and in which i mean “Those disingenuous and lying of that hostile Islamic “Republic ” of Iran…'”
This is rather good time to reiterate about those Muslim regime officials of Iran and them lying.
Liars they ,truly actually ,indeed really are
gravenimage says
Iran’s former Atomic Energy Agency top dog confirms: Islamic Republic has active nuclear weapons program
…………
As we suspected. Will this stop Biden from wanting to fork over more money to the Mullahs? Don’t count on it…
Infidel says
I’m impressed how the shi’a managed to survive in Iran w/ Taqiyya until the Safavids formally and forcefully converted all sunnis of Iran to shi’a. Interesting how the Arabs didn’t fall for it
Relic says
weapons program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWmQbk5h86w